UFC on FOX 4 results: Phil De Fries chokes out fellow Brit Oli Thompson in second

LOS ANGELES – It didn’t start out as a gold-medal quality fight, but Phil De Fries’ finish of fellow Brit Oli Thompson may have felt Olympian.

De Fries dropped Thompson in the second round, nearly got a finish, then took his back and finished with a rear-naked choke at 4:16 of the frame.

The heavyweight fight was part of the preliminary card of Saturday’s UFC on FOX 4 event at Staples Center in Los Angeles. It aired on FUEL TV prior to a main card on FOX.

De Fries landed the fight’s first big shot, a flush right hand that briefly stunned Thompson in the first round. Thompson clinched up in response, and the action stalled along the fence as De Fries tried to drop for one of many takedown attempts in the fight until John McCarthy separated the two. With a minute left, the two had to be separated again after a second stalemate.

In the second, after more clinch work, De Fries clocked Thompson with a right hand and dropped him. De Fries pounced and landed some big shots as McCarthy looked on. But Thompson fought back to his feet and barely survived the barrage.

It wouldn’t be for long, though, as De Fries on the ground worked to take a still seemingly dazed Thompson’s back. And from there, he latched onto a tight rear-naked choke that had Thompson quickly tapping.

“(I’m) very happy to go in there and get on a winning track,” De Fries said. “My training at Alliance MMA in San Diego has been amazing with all their great fighters and champions. As much as I love my fish and chips and being in England, the time spent there just focusing on training made all the difference. There was huge pressure in this fight to win. I used to be scared to go in and get beaten up or hurt, but in the UFC you’re just scared to lose. It took me a bit of time to get warmed up out there, but I’m glad I got out of the fight with no injuries and I was able to use my jiu-jitsu and show that us Brits have ground game, too.”

De Fries (9-1 MMA, 2-1 UFC) got back in the win column following a February loss to Stipe Miocic and won for the second time in the UFC. Thompson (9-4 MMA, 0-2 UFC) fell to 0-2 in the promotion after a second-round TKO loss in March to Shawn Jordan.

The Latest

In this week’s Trading Shots, Danny Downes and Ben Fowlkes look at Ronda Rousey’s 34-second victory over Bethe Correia at UFC 190 and try to put it into terms that capture the moment without getting swept away by it.

A total of 26 fighters got their chance to shine on Saturday as part of UFC 190 at Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena. Now that UFC 190 is in the books, it’s time to commence MMAjunkie’s “Three Stars” ceremony.

The man known for cranking submissions to the point of injury added eye-gouging to his repertoire. But is the controversy of Rousimar Palhares too essential to his bizarre, awful appeal for his employers to take any meaningful action against him?